Morwell residents collect evidence of smoke health impacts

A group from the Morwell community says it has evidence that smoke from the Hazelwood coal mine fire is affecting residents.

The Victorian chief health officer, Rosemary Lester, has repeatedly said the smoke is having no serious health effects.

A spokesman from the community group, Simon Ellis, says people are concerned for their families.

He says the evidence he has collected will be presented to the inquiry announced by the State Government yesterday.

"I'd probably say about 1,500 now where people have filled the forms in as well of health issues, financial issues, and we've got them," he said.

"We've got them all under lock and key, nobody knows where they are because we don't want them going missing so that when it comes to that inquiry and they say, 'okay what have we got', we can say, 'this is what we've collected already'."

Goongerah Deddick Trail fire

Meanwhile, the Department of Environment and Primary Industries and Parks Victoria are starting the mammoth task of rehabilitating country damaged by the Goongerah Deddick Trail fire in East Gippsland.

The fire was declared contained this week after burning for more than a month through more than 160,000 hectares of bush and private land.

However, he says repairing the damage from control works on public land like bulldozer tracks and firebreaks will take much longer.

"In terms of the rehab, the emphasis is on the private property work, so we hope to have the bulk of the private property work done in a fortnight but the rehab stuffs going to go on for months if not years," he said.

Landholders burnt out by the Goongerah Deddick Trail fire are calling for an investigation into the way the fire was managed.

Lightning strikes started the fire in January and it tore through private property on February 9.

Rob Belcher had 60 per cent of his property burnt by the fire and says it should have been extinguished in January before it got out of hand.

"When is the Government going to ask, why ... [is] nearly every major fire that Victoria experiences coming out of national parks?" he said.

"I know the answer but I think the question needs to be asked, everyone up here is demanding a judicial inquiry into this fire."